August 2024
On the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, a giant infrastructure project is picking up speed, to the despair of conservationists. The 1,554-kilometre Tren Maya – the Maya Train – loops around the peninsula from the tourist resort of Cancún in the northwest to Palenque city in the south, through jungles and above Yucatán’s famous cenotes – natural sinkholes popular with divers and which form Mexico’s largest freshwater aquifer. In the August issue, Mark Russell reports on the ecological damage caused so far, and the latest attempt to stop the train.
Also in the August issue: a tiny kangaroo-like marsupial, once declared extinct, has returned to Australia’s Great Sandy Desert; writer Chris Aslan tells the story of his scheme to help Tajikistan’s herders sell their – previously discarded – yak down; and scientists find evidence of giant viruses that might be living on Greenland’s algae-covered ice cap – could their discovery help to slow the melting ice?
